Annotated Websites

Explore Learning
www.explorelearning.com
The explore learning website contains the Gizmo programs, online manipulatives/simulations that allow students to explore mathematics concepts. Teachers, students and parents can search for gizmos by state, standard, or mathematic topic. There are short assessments at the end of every gizmo that students can take after they have explored with the gizmo. Students receive immediate feedback from the assessment along with an explanation for missed questions. The explore learning site has several gizmos for operations with positive and negative numbers that assist students in learning the concepts required by state standards.

IXL
www.ixl.com
The IXL website is a math website that has games and practice problems for PreK through high school algebra. You do not have to have a membership to use the site. However, if you don’t, you can only work a limited number of games or problems before you are locked out for the day. Parents and teacher can purchase memberships from $9.99 a month for a parent to $199 a year for a teacher and her class.

Math Goodies
www.mathgoodies.com
Math Goodies is a free site for parents, students, and teachers in search of math help. They have a variety of lessons, including one on integers. In addition to lessons, there are a variety of resources to access such as worksheets, games, web quests, articles, puzzles, calculators and more. The materials are designed for grades 5 through 8, but could serve a purpose for older, remedial learners as well as younger, gifted learners. This is an excellent tool for a teacher to have in their “box”.

Math-Play
www.math-play.com
Math-Play is a website that is more of a one-stop-shop for middle grades math games. We have personally used these this year on computer lab days and the students love them. There is a variety of topics to choose from including many integer games. Students can even link up on some of the games and play each other from their own computers. There is also access to other grade level games such as elementary grades and high school math topics.

Math.com – The World of Math Online
www.math.com
This website offers homework help, practice, tutoring and games for students, parents and teachers to access and use for math topics including integers. Through this website you can also link to other websites that have educational resources, such as lesson plans, to use in the classroom. There is also a calculator tab that has several types of calculators to use depending on the need.

Funbrain
www.funbrain.com
Funbrain has a variety of reading and math games for students K-8. They also have games just for fun as well. For integers, they have a car race game that works with a students speed in answering problems containing integers.

Khan Academy
www.khanacademy.org
This website is a fantastic educational tool for math teachers. It contains hundreds of middle school and high school mathematics tutorial videos for students to watch. Students can access these at school or home for help working numerous types of math concepts. These videos can also be incorporated in the classroom as either whole group presentations or as remedial stations. There are several videos that could be used to support lessons on operations with integers.

Math Playground
www.mathplayground.com
Math Playground is another mathematics online resource to assist grades K-7. There are games, videos and word problems that can be incorporated into classroom instruction. Students and parents can also access these from home. We have used this site before in our math 7 classroom as either whole group demonstrations or computer stations. We also put links to the games and videos on the math 7 blog to make it easier for the parents and students to access.

Study Jams!
http://studyjams.scholastic.com
Study Jams are cartoon based video and activities that can be incorporated into classroom instruction or at home. There are a variety of mathematical topics including integers. They are appropriate for grades K-8. We have used a few of these in our math 7 lessons as activators for the students. They actually enjoy them and will request to view them again. The videos that work more like interactivities are great to use for checking for understandings to assess student concept attainment.

BrainPOP
www.brainpop.com
BrainPop is a wonderful educational resource for teachers of all subjects. It contains educational videos with characters Tim and Moby. They explain the topic in a way that is fun and funny for the students. There are also supporting activities, graphic organizers and quizzes that teachers can print or display. We have used these numerous times in the math 7 classrooms as activators, closings and checking for understandings.